


He used to keep a paper journal, now he uses Dreamwidth

by ivorygates



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 19:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: What it says on the tin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written to a prompt [here:](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/60110.html?thread=2768590&style=mine#cmt2768590)
> 
> (And thus, one of the few fics I have written that I can date absolutely: May, 2011)

He's always kept a journal. Professionally -- documenting sites and artifacts and procedures -- and personally (a way of binding time and owning his experiences, the things that so many forces -- fate and blind chance and human malice -- have tried to take from him). Field notes in octavo volumes, suitable for stuffing into a pocket or workbag, transferred (at leisure) to larger journals (tidied and expanded but never corrected; he'll explain his errors but not excuse them).

It's always been handwritten. The places he goes (Egypt, Abydos, the Protectorate of Rand, choose your universe and I'll endorse it) aren't on the cutting edge of (Western) technology. Computers break (lost, stolen, strayed), batteries run down. Paper and pen (pencil, crayon, pen, charcoal) is safe.

Safer.

But not inviolate, just as his own _self_ is not inviolate: he's lost life and possessions (and in losing his journals, those most personal possessions, has lost himself twice over) enough times to wish (in his frustration) to build bulwarks against the rising tide of entropy.

Certainly the SGC provides a nimble and clever answer: terabytes and teraflops and an architecture that can crack an alien code, run a starship, destroy the world. And he uses it (it is filled with mission reports he has written, presentations he has given, none of which are true, are real, in the sense of compassing the whole) but it's inadequate (he has decided) to hold the echoes of self and sense-of-self he wishes most to defend, to protect.

To cherish.

And besides...

The day will come (not today, not tomorrow, but soon) when he leaves the SGC behind. Atlantis or Washington or unimaginable retirement: his life has been spent in motion and it always will be.

He has always traveled light (by inclination, by inevitability), and now, standing in the foothills of his future, facing the brave new world of his own survival (endurance, persistence, triumph over odds and circumstance), he cannot imagine dragging behind him computers or flash drives or bookcases of journals. And yet the impulse to chronicle, to document, to memorialize his life (a long goodbye, a long hello) remains. It seems (as have so many things) a problem without solution, but in the end (as with so many problems, paradoxes, riddles in his life), there is one.

_"Dreamwidth is an online home for creative people of all types. We're part social network, part blogging system, and part content management system -- and our site is designed to be easy to use even if you don't know what any of those things are."_

Anonymity, individuality, durability, privacy ... a place to set down his history and map his future. Here he can decant his history, empty his journals, preserve self for Self, an archive he can return to, add to, for as long as he survives.

He chooses a journal name, and begins.

#


End file.
